Sailors up the wazoo!

Well, that was unexpected. We got about a dozen potential debate novices showing up last night. This is about 25 times as many as we usually get. And some of them seemed to be engaged by the whole business (introductory talk about CD with a side order of WMDs). My normal math is that half will return next week, plus a couple of new ones who didn’t make it last night, and then half of them the week after that for the duration. Meaning maybe I’ll have three or four novices this year, a bumper crop. I’m going to have to start paying attention again.

Pups? Yeah, they haven’t cancelled it or anything. I’m seriously into the zone, but the bottom line is that I’m only tabbing it, not running it, so although I regularly provide incredibly wise counsel over every ’nanigan, eventually they go off and do whatever they want. In other words, I don’t get to fully engage in God Mode, as O’C calls it. But Bump is coming soon, and there’s more where that came from. At least we tend to have most people trained to understand that, with MJP, once judge rankings open, the game is over, because every change requires the entire field to comb over the rankings yet again. My advice to anyone is, do your rankings at the last minute, and that way you’ll only have to do them once. For everyone else, make sure you have reliable judges.

I reminded Eponymous Matt to upload the tabroom version of TRPC, and also to check it and make sure it runs, as there have been problems in the past with missing library files (although I think the tabroom version solves that problem). With JV on one machine and V on the other, the real bottleneck is Friday night, where we have to get all the ballots in and at least V set and preferably both for the start Saturday morning. Starting friction is always rough enough without us adding to it. Of course, Saturday night we only have to prep V octos, because JV will have transpired and everyone knows who broke, and we have hours to do the pairing for it in the morning. But V kicks off at 8, and we’ve got to post results and do doubles, but at least it’s only one division, and if we’re lucky, it will follow a single flight of run-offs. I can never remember from one year to the next the previous iteration, but I do remember eating a nice late dinner last year on the main Yale drag, so we must have made fairly decent time. Given that I’ll have Catholic Charlie with me, and he fuels solely on red meat, the meal is going to be very important.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to do an update mailing to the MHL, since we now have a venue for 2/1, the Superbowl Saturday abandoned by Newark. Horace Mann to the rescue! Also the NYSDCA finals are set for the Bronx at the end of March. In other words, most things are falling into place. And maybe this year I’ll have a team to enjoy it with.